WE COME TO the
genealogies of the New Testament. Most wonderful and most illuminating
are these genealogies which establish the relationship of the
Lord Jesus to the rest of the human family. It is no new discovery
that each of the four Gospels appears to have been written and
directed by the Holy Spirit with a particular type of audience
in view. Matthew wrote for the Jewish people, presenting Jesus
Christ as the Hope of Israel. Mark wrote for the common man,
and in those days the common man meant virtually the slave, for
the Roman Empire was a world in which a comparatively few were
served by the vast majority, and that vast majority had little
if any personal dignity. Mark presented the Lord as the Servant
of Man par excellence. Luke wrote for the better-educated Gentile,
for whom the great goal was to be "the cultured man"
‹ or in Greek terms, one whose disposition was characterized
by the dual hallmark of a gentleman: "sweet reasonableness
and appropriate seriousness." Luke therefore presented the
Lord as the ideal man, the very Son of Man. These three, the
so-called Synoptic Gospels, set their sights at the same level,
playing between them a beautiful harmony of chords by taking
care to note, with inspired wisdom, those things which Jesus
said and did in his character as man ‹ though never failing
to acknowledge his divinity. And finally, John built upon this
concordant testimony to the perfection of the manhood of Jesus
to show that part of the mystery of this perfection lay in the
fact that He was not merely the Son of Man but also the Son of
God.
Each of these authors, if one may
allow some liberty in the use of language, accompanied his record
with an appropriate genealogy. In Matthew the line of Jesus Christ
is traced forward from Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation.
In Luke the line is traced back to Adam, as the father of the
human race. In John the line

pg
1 of 18

is traced back into eternity
with God. And what of Mark? How fitting that there should be
no genealogy here: who cared whence his servant came? Slaves
are not recorded, for records of this kind are kept only to establish
rights. And so it is only in a manner of speaking that each of
the Gospels has its appropriate form of genealogy, but the absence
of a genealogy in Mark is a beautiful tribute to the underlying
unity of Scripture and the perfect agreement between its parts.
Sometimes this perfect agreement
appears to be marred by contradiction, but I think it is an invariable
rule that the apparent contradictions challenge us to resolve
them and, in so doing, allow us to discover great truths which
would not otherwise be discovered, but which are like a feast
of fat things to the soul. This is never more true than in the
case of the seeming inconsistencies between the genealogies given
by Matthew and by Luke.
The easiest thing here is to assume either that one of them is
wrong, or that both of them are. Needless to say, a great many
writers who have casual respect for the Word of God have concluded
just this. To quote one such writer: (23)

There can be no doubt that the
anticipation that Christ would be descended from David was very
general in our Lord's time (John 7:42, etc.). It is also clear
that it was believed -- at least by the disciples -- that Jesus
was indeed descended from him (Matthew 1:1; Acts 2:30; 12:23;
Romans 1:3; Revelation 22:16, etc.). The genealogies in Matthew
and Luke are apparently inserted to prove that this is a fact.
But at first sight it would appear that the two genealogies are
mutually destructive and that one or both are entirely untrustworthy.
They both appear to be genealogies of Joseph, but they start
from two different sons of David, and they end with the discrepancy,
which cannot be ascribed to a copyist's error, in the name of
Joseph's father.

These genealogies
are provided as an insert, since it is important to have the
text; human nature being what it is, there may be a tendency
for the reader not to take time (even if he does get out a Bible)
to check back and forth from the one to the other as we study
the two family trees.
With this text before us, let us
consider certain segments of these two genealogies under four
headings:

1. Anomalies that appear within a genealogy
itself;
2. Apparent conflicts with background information in the Old
Testament;
3. Contradictions between the two genealogies;

4. Departures from
the normal method of setting forth this kind of information in
public records of
this kind.

Section 1: Anomalies That Appear
Within a Genealogy Itself

The number of names listed in Matthew's genealogy
presents a problem, for we are informed that they total three
times fourteen, or 42 in all (Matthew 1:17); but if we count
them, there appear to be only 41. It is clear enough that there
are 14 names from Abraham to David, and 14 names from Solomon
to Jechonias, but unless we repeat Jechonias we have only 13
names for the balance. The only justification for repeating Jechonias
is to make the assumption that this one name stands for two separate
individuals whose original names may in their Hebrew form have
been slightly different, but whose Hellenized transliteration
has assumed the same form. Genealogical records provided elsewhere
in Scripture supply us in a rather remarkable way with information
demonstrating that this assumption is probably correct.
To begin with, it will be noted
in Matthew 1:11 that the first-mentioned Jechonias is said to
have been accompanied by "his brethren". If this Jechonias
is identified with Jehoiakim, he is in fact the immediate son
of Josias, as Matthew tells us, and did indeed have brothers,
as 1 Chronicles 3:15 informs us -- namely, Johanan, Zedekiah,
and Shallum.
This man Jehoiakim, in turn, had
a son Jeconiah (I Chronicles 3:16), but this son did not have
"brethren": he had only a single brother -- whose name
happens also to have been Zedekiah (I Chronicles 3:16). Undoubtedly
Jeconiah is to be identified with the Jechonias of Matthew 1:12,
who became, as I Chronicles 3:17 assures us, the father of Salathiel
(of Matthew 1:12).
In other words, the first Jechonias
of Matthew's genealogy is to be identified with the Jehoiakim
who had three brothers. The second Jechonias of Matthew is to
be identified with the Jeconiah who had only one brother and
who went into captivity into Babylon and who there raised a son,
Salathiel.
All this makes perfectly good sense
and restores the proper number of names to complete the tally
of three times fourteen, provided that one understands that the
two entries of the name "Jechonias" in Matthew do not
represent one individual but two. The first is distinguished
by having several brothers; the second bore Salathiel in captivity.

pg.3
of 18

Not
a few commentators who have little confidence in the Wordof God have, in the past, taken the apparent
discrepancy in the total count of generations -- along with the
fact that Matthew omits a certain number of names (as we shall
see in the following section) -- as a proof that Scripture is
far from being historically accurate or consistent. The mathematical
inconsistency here in Matthew's genealogy is apparent only and
results from paying insufficient attention to the precise wording.
This inattention is inevitable if one has only a low regard for
the Word of God. But if we observe that the first Jechonias is
said to have had brothers and the second Jechonias had only one
brother, then the difference between the two is clear to the
attentive eye. Indeed, what better assurance could God have supplied
us as a means of identification and distinction, especially if
He foresaw that the names which are so distinct in their Hebrew
form should in due time become confused in the Greek?

By contrast
with a fair proportion of Luke's genealogy, Matthew's genealogy
is clearly derived from records which are still accessible to
us from the Old Testament. Many of the names in Luke are not
to be found there. This enables us to go back to the originals,
as it were, and when we do this, we may be surprised to find
that Matthew has omitted quite a number of names which by normal
standards of keeping such records ought to have been included.
The circumstance demonstrates rather clearly that Matthew's genealogy
has a special character to it.
Here we meet with a beautiful illustration
of what is God's view of history as opposed to man's. While Matthew
1:8 counts Ozias (Uzziah in the Old Testament) as the son of
Joram (Jehoram in the Old Testament),
1 Chronicles 3:11,12 shows that in actual fact he was not his
son but his great-great grandson.
When Jehoram came to the throne
of Judah, Israel to the north was being led more and more deeply
into wickedness by their worst king, Ahab, and his notorious
queen, Jezebel. Jehoram shows the set of his sail by marrying
their daughter, Athaliah. The history of the royal house of Judah
then passes into one of its saddest phases: the immediate descendants
of Athaliah and Jehoram became involved in a series of disastrous
events which dreadfully fulfilled the judgment of God pronounced
through Elijah (I Kings 21) against the line of Ahab and Jezebel,
a judgment which persisted "unto the third and fourth generation".

pg.4
of 18

When Jehoram died of some atrocious
disease, as Elijah had warned him he would, his son (Ahaziah)
came to the throne. Having aapparently learned absolutely nothing
from the judgment which had befallen his father, Ahaziah proved
himself an equally wicked monarch and was murdered in a popular
uprising. His mother, Athaliah (Ahab's daughter, it will be remembered),
perhaps in a fit of fury and remembering Elijah's judgment against
her house, executed judgment herself upon it and set out to murder
every remaining male of her father Ahab's line. But it happened
that Ahaziah's youngest son, Joash, had a sister who was endeared
to him; this sister managed to spirit him away and hide him,
so that in due time he was unexpectedly brought out of hiding
and, at the age of seven, presented to the people as their rightful
king.
Joash appears to have been a better
man than his father or his grandfather. But whether by his very
nature, or because the priesthood which should have aided and
guided him was itself equally corrupt, he too failed to improve
the spiritual life of the people he ruled. In due time Joash
also became a prey to treachery, being murdered by his own servants
while he was in bed.
Joash was succeeded by his son
Amaziah who, unlike his father, seems to have tried to do the
right thing but, as Scripture says, "not with a perfect
heart". After various intrigues and a fatal engagement with
Israel,

pg.5
of 18

Amaziah departed entirely
from the vision he once had and ended up a defeated man and a
fugitive. Escaping from Jerusalem when he learned of a conspiracy
against his life, he fled to Lachish. But they pursued him there,
and there he too was murdered.
Amaziah was succeeded by his son
Uzziah, the "Ozias" whom Matthew in his genealogy sets
forth as the son of Joram. In other words, three generations
are missing, three generations of kings of Judah who, while they
preserved intact the line of the Promised Seed, did not in themselves
prove worthy to be remembered in it. Thus the curse pronounced
upon the house of Ahab by Elijah, God's mouthpiece, persisted
unto the fourth generation: Athaliah was the first generation
of Ahab's line, Ahaziah was the second generation, Joash the
third, and Amaziah the fourth. In the official temple records,
it may be that the names of Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah were
removed or marked in some way as having no official status in
the royal line -- just as in Europe a Bar-Sinister may be marked
across the arms of a dishonoured branch of a family.
Evidently, at that period in history
and for many centuries after, there was observed the practice
of removing from all official records the names of individuals
who had brought shame upon themselves. The Athenians, according
to Livy, pronounced a similar doom on the memory of Alcibiades,
and of Philip V of Macedon in the year 200 B.C. (24) In Egypt during the time
of the eighteenth dynasty, the Egyptian priests similarly cursed
the memory of Amenhotep IV and sought to remove his name from
all monuments. The same thing was done with the name of Hatshepsut
by her successors.
It is a curious thing how potent
is the threat to the individual of having his very remembrance
blotted out. It was called, in the days of Imperial Rome, the
Damnatio Memoriae, and it was carried out in a striking
manner against the emperor Commodus. (25) His "memory was condemned" in a single
night's sitting of the Senate within twenty-four hours of his
death, the same night in which Pertinax was nominated as emperor.
It was decreed that every statue of Commodus was to be destroyed
and his name erased from every private document and public monument.
One wonders what they did with his name on the document which
ordered its removal!

24. Livy, Book XXXI, Chap. 44: as quoted
by A. S. Lewis, "The Genealogies of Our Lord," Transactions
of the Victoria Institute, vol. 44, 19I2, p.12.
25. Lucius Aurelius Commodus was surely the most degraded
and utterly corrupt of all Roman emperors. His short history
is disgusting, and it is some credit to the Romans that after
his murder in A.D. 192, the Senate attempted to blot out his
very memory.

pg.6
of 18

It
seems a reflection of something we find not infrequently in the
Old Testament and even in the New. God had warned Israel "whoso
sinneth against Me, him will I blot out of my book" (Exodus
32:33). The same thought is reflected in Deuteronomy 9:14; 25:19;
29:20; and in 2 Kings 14:27. In Psalm 9:5 we read, "Thou
hast rebuked the nations, Thou hast destroyed the wicked, Thou
hast blotted out their name forever and ever." This is repeated
in Psalm 69:28: "Let them be blotted out of the Book of
Life." By contrast is the promise to the redeemed in Revelation
3:5, "I will in no wise blot out his name from the Book
of Life." So in effect, when God assures David that He will
blot out his sins and remember them no more, He is saying that
they shall be as though they had never been. And in the genealogy
which leads from Abraham to Christ, these three men -- Ahaziah,
Joash, and Amaziah -- are blotted out as though they had never
been and it seems therefore that if this erasure of their names
took place in the original official documents which had been
preserved in the temple from time immemorial, Matthew may have
merely copied down precisely what he found in the record.
Some authorities wonder where either
Matthew or Luke obtained his genealogy, since they believe that
all such records were lost in the destruction of the first temple.
However, it is generally agreed that a knowledge of one's genealogy
was of very great importance in every Jewish family even when
they went into exile, because it was only on the basis of this
information that the Promised Land could be divided justly. With
the ready means that we today have available for keeping written
records, our faculty for remembering may have suffered in some
respects. But where written record is more difficult to secure,
prodigious feats of memory are not infrequently observed. Native
people have been reported by missionaries to have memorized whole
books of the New Testament, apparently without too much difficulty.
And it is well-known that the Arab youth was formerly -- and
perhaps still is -- expected to be able to recite his own genealogy
for seventy generations. When an Australian aborigine comes unexpectedly
upon another family's camp, he sits down some distance away from
it until an elder from the camp comes out to him. Thereupon the
two will recite their genealogies until they strike a common
ancestor, and when this has been done, the stranger will be invited
in and introduced with the proper identification as to his relationship,
so that everybody else in the camp will know how to address him
correctly, and he them.
Josephus speaks of the great care
which the Jewish people in his day took to preserve certain lines,

pg.7
of 18

in particular the royal
line from David and the royal priesthood. Julius African (26) says that Herod the Great
caused as many official registers as he could get hold of to
be burned, because he himself was of a plebeian family and he
wanted to conceal from the Roman emperor the fact that he had
no blood relationship with either the royal line of David or
the priestly line of Levi. But it seems unlikely that he could
destroy them all, and the existence of private family registers
is proved by the discovery of Aramaic documents concerning the
Jewish colony which existed between 471 and 411 B.C. at Elephantine
near Assoun. This is, of course, much earlier than Herod, but
it shows that some genealogical information survived outside
of Palestine even if Herod was fairly successful locally. According
to a fairly recent Jewish Encyclopedia, (27) we are told that in the Talmudic Age -- i.e., subsequent
to Herod's time -- interest in preservation of genealogies was
lessened, but the patriarchs in Palestine and the exiled patriarchs
in Babylon down to the thirteenth century kept these records
alive wherever possible, and the former were believed to possess,
interestingly enough, unbroken descent from David in the male
line only. This is a point of some interest in view of the fact
that Luke's genealogy is widely considered to be that of Mary.
By the omission of these three
names, we have an illustration of a point made much of by those
who wish to extend the chronology of the Bible sufficiently to
accommodate current views of the antiquity of man which demand
anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000 years. The claim is that these
genealogies do not supply us with an unbroken series of generations
because there are known gaps, such as that in Matthew 1:8, which
makes a great-great-grandson a son, thus skipping three generations.
What is never admitted by those
who attempt thus to extend the biblical chronology is that the
possibility of arguing for such gaps exists only because elsewhere
in Scripture the gaps are filled in. Had we only a single genealogy
for example (for some particular period), we would have no evidence
that gaps existed in it. It is only when the same period is supplied
elsewhere with genealogical material (which neither provides
us with more generations for the same period, or with fewer generations
for the same period) that we can say with any certainty that
a genealogy may be presented which is not actually complete though
it has the appearance in itself of being so. It is perfectly
true that when we are told that such-and-such a man is the "son"
of some other individual, we are not always to assume that it
means sonship in our more limited sense, since Ozias was the

26. Africanus: quoted by Eusebius, History
of the Church, 1,7.
27. "Genealogy," in Standard Jewish Encyclopedia,
Doubleday, New York, 1962.

pg.8
of 18

son of Jehoram only in
the sense of being a descendant.
But this surely does not allow
us to assume that, wherever we decide it would be convenient,
we are free to insert an unlimited number of generations merely
because the word son has this wider meaning. The fact is that
in the historical portions of Scripture -- that is, in those
parts of the Bible which detail the lives and doings of individuals
-- we can find no break anywhere in the record in the historical
account itself. People's doings are set forth relatedly so that
one gets the feeling -- which undoubtedly results from the fact
that this is a continuous record -- that each succeeding generation
picked up the historical threads of those who immediately preceded
them and united the past and the future by their own doings.
This is manifestly true even in the very earliest parts of Scripture
which record the growth of civilization before the Flood as well
as its recovery immediately after it. Moreover, as we have seen,
there are chronological cross-ties in the record wherever the
line from the first Adam to the Last Adam is being traced. The
omission of these three names from Matthew's genealogy does not
give us permission to take liberties with the genealogies, but
only teaches us that God discounts entirely and blots out of
history whatever has come under his judgment. This is an unhappy
thing for those who have not experienced redemption, but it is
wonderfully reassuring to those who have, since by his gracious
action in so doing, the redeemed can have nothing to fear in
the judgment, for there will be no record against them.
Another example of apparent conflict
appears in Matthew 1:7, which tells us that Solomon begat Rehoboam
who begat Abia who begat Asa. In I Kings 14:31 we are told that
when Rehoboam died, his son Abijam (to be identified with the
Greek form Abia of Matthew) reigned in his stead. In I
Kings 15:2 we are told that Abijam's mother's name was Maachah,
and that she was the daughter of Abishalom. In 2 Chronicles 11:20,21
this individual, Abishalom, is named alternatively as Absalom.
Jewish tradition identifies this Absalom as David's son - which
is quite possible, since David bore Absalom by a woman named
Maachah -- and this would account for Absalom's naming his daughter
after the mother. Now, in Matthew, Asa is said to have been Abia's
son with which I Kings 15:8 agrees -- for it says that when Abijam
died, his son Asa reigned in his stead. But the curious thing
is that the record in Kings goes on to say that he reigned for
forty-one years in Jerusalem after succeeding to the throne,
and "his mother's name was Maachah, the daughter
of Abishalom." Thus Asa who was the son

pg.9
of 18

of Abia nevertheless
appears from the text to have had the same mother. It is conceivable,
of course, in a case of incest, but this is certainly not true
here, otherwise Matthew's genealogy would surely have omitted
one of the names at least, if not both -- for such a thing as
incest was an abomination in the sight of the Lord. The explanation
is undoubtedly that Maachah was indeed the mother of Abia and
the grandmother of Asa. Thus, while -- as we have already seen
-- a son or a grandson may look back to a common father, similarly
a son or a grandson may evidently look back to a common mother.
Indeed, in I Kings 15:8,11 Asa is said to have been the son of
both Abijab his father and the son of David, the latter being
more precisely his great-great-grandfather.

This is the simplest way to reconcile 2 Chronicles 13:2 with
I Kings 15:2. In 2 Chronicles 13:2 Abijah's mother's name is
also spelled "Michaiah", where she is given as the
daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. Therefore Absalom must have married
a girl from Gibeah named Uriel (even though the name Uriel is
otherwise used of men only), for in I Kings 15:2 Abijah is said
to have been the son of Maachah the daughter of Absalom.

pg.10
of 18

Working
out these little problems not merely enlarges one's understanding
of the relationship of these peoples, but somehow makes the individuals
live, as a map makes places live that we have once visited. And
if it is not irreverent to say so, finding solutions is like
finding a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle or a missing word
in a crossword puzzle -- it provides genuine intellectual satisfaction.

Section 3: Contradictions Between The Two Genealogies

Luke provides
us with a line from Adam to David, a section of the genealogy
which is not found in Matthew, for reasons already noted, and
which therefore in no way conflicts with it. But from David forward
to Jesus there are disagreements almost all the way along.
Needless to say, these disagreements
were once made much of by those who held a low opinion of the
integrity of Scripture. But in due time these very disagreements
led to a search for some means of reconciliation, and this search
proved fruitful because it brought to light a further truth which
might otherwise have escaped notice entirely. Now that the truth
is recognized, there seem to be many incidental confirmations
of it from other parts of Scripture; but these confirmations
were not recognized as such until the truth they confirmed had
itself been rediscovered.
This discovery is that Luke's genealogy
traces the line of Mary, not of Joseph. Thus, at the very beginning
of Luke's record -- a record which sets the names in the reverse
order from that given in Matthew -- we meet with the first "contradiction":
namely, that Joseph was the son of Heli, whereas Matthew says
that Joseph was the son of Jacob. Although some of the early
Church Fathers perceived that this was Mary's pedigree, they
did not apparently make the discovery that in the Talmud, Jewish
tradition held that Mary was the daughter of Heli (Beth-Heli).
(28) Early Christian
writers held that Mary was the daughter of Joiakim and Anna.
But the name Joiakim is interchangeable with Eliakim, as 2 Chronicles
36:4 shows, and Eli or Heli is an abridgment of Eliakim. It is
thus quite possible that the early Christian tradition is in
perfect harmony with that of the Jewish people themselves whose
knowledge would be based on temple records. This is undoubtedly
the basis of the early

28. Jerusalem Talmud, Haggigah,
Book 77,4.

pg.11
of 18

assurance that Jesus
was, in the flesh, of the seed of David. In the annunciation
(Luke 1:32), the promised Saviour is called at once "Son
of God" and "Son of David": Son of God by virtue
of his conception by the Holy Spirit, and Son of David by virtue
of his birth through Mary. This should therefore be compared
with Romans 1:3,4, in which we are told that He who was God's
Son was "born of the seed of David according to the flesh
and declared to be the Son of God with power. . . . " Later
on, in his confrontation with the Jewish authorities, Jesus answered
a question which had probably arisen from the fact that, while
they recognized the validity of his lineal claim to being David's
son through Mary, they would not recognize his further claim
to being the Son of God. He pointed out to them from Psalm 110:1
that while the Messiah was indeed to be David's son, David nevertheless
called Him "Lord". They had no answer to this. The
Lord's argument could only have real force if the people to whom
it was addressed recognized his claim as the son of Mary who
was a daughter of David.
Why, then, is Mary's name not included in Luke's genealogy? Undoubtedly,
to establish a legal pedigree it is necessary to set down the
name of the head of the household -- in this case, of course,
Joseph. At the same time, according to the Jewish way of thinking
-- and indeed, according to the common practice of many other
societies -- the man who married could claim his wife's father
as his own. We ourselves recognize this right, only we make the
distinction of saying "father-in-law" -- rather than
"father". There are a number of examples in Scripture
where this principle is followed.
In I Chronicles 2:31 we have an
illustration of this practice of naming another as the father.
In this instance it will be observed that son succeeded "son"
until we come to Ahlai, whom we know had a daughter but not a
son. Meanwhile Ahlai had an Egyptian servant named Jarha and,
as was not altogether unusual at that time, he gave his daughter
to him as a wife. But from then on the children are still credited
to him as his descendants -- that is, members of his own line
through his daughter -- and therefore listed as his sons and
grandsons. Thus the children of his daughter are listed as his
children rather than the children of his daughter's husband,
and they in their turn would look back to him as their ultimate
father. Of necessity, Jarha would therefore be accounted as Sheshan's
son. The following genealogy sets this forth:

pg.12
of 18

The manner in
which Joseph's name is introduced in Luke's genealogy is also
exceptional. Whereas each man in the line is said to have been,
simply, "of" his father, Jesus is said to have been
the son "nominally" of Joseph -- such is the Greek
which the Authorized Version renders "as was supposed".
The verbal root of this qualifying term is nomidzo, which
has the sense of legal standing or standing established by custom:
it is cognate with the root which gave rise to the English form
"nominal". Thus it was clearly recognized that Jesus
was the son of Joseph legally, but not necessarily by natural
generation. This claim is accepted without question in John 6:42,
"whose mother and father we know."
When a man wished to identify as
his son one who was not his son by natural generation, he could
do so by a process of legal adoption which involved two acts.
In the first place, he must name the child. Evidently the name
"Jesus" was registered as the child's name by Joseph
in obedience to the angel's instructions in Matthew 1:21. These
instructions, it will be noted, were given by the angel directly
to Joseph himself rather than to Mary. The significance of this
from the legal point of view is great. Although Joseph appears
to have predeceased Mary, it does not appear that anyone ever
seriously challenged his familial rights.
The second requirement has an interesting
history to it. It is well-known that the Code of Hammurabi played
an important part in structuring much of the social custom of
the Jewish people, since it was the legal

pg.13
of 18

code in force at the
time of Abraham. In section 188 of this code it is written: "If
an artisan takes a son to sonship and teaches him his handicraft,
no one may bring a claim for him". Evidently Joseph taught
Jesus to be a carpenter in fulfillment of this recognized requirement,
a guarantee which would stand even if the records in the temple
were destroyed. It was a kind of double insurance of legal status.
A comparison of Matthew 13:55 with Mark 6:3 shows that both father
and son were carpenters. Matthew 11:30 tells us something of
his skill!
Thus, although Mary in her own right could claim descent from
David through Heli her father, the temple record could not enter
her name in the line but must enter the name of her husband,
the adopting father of her child. So when Luke copied out this
record, he quite properly omitted Mary's name and substituted
that of Joseph.
We have, therefore, a genealogy from David to Mary preserved,
presumably, in the family of Heli and perhaps actually in their
possession -- for as we have already noted previously; long after
the temple was destroyed with all its records, there still existed
families who claimed descent from David and claimed it, significantly,
in the female line. On this account the names in Luke's Gospel
from David forward do not coincide (except at one point) with
the names in Matthew's Gospel. David had three sons of note --
namely, Solomon, Absolon, and Nathan -- and it is in the line
of Nathan that Mary's claim is established.
In Luke 3:28 we have "Melchi";
in Luke 3:27 his son is given as "Neri"; and his son,
in turn, is given as Salathiel followed by Zorobabel and then
Rhesa. At this point we have some apparent connections with the
genealogy in Matthew's Gospel, for in Matthew 1:12 we have Jechonias
whose son was Salathiel followed by Zorobabel. When we turn to
the Old Testament to find out what this uniting of the two families
signifies, we find ourselves with insufficient information to
provide an unequivocal answer -- but just enough to allow a reconstruction
which, in the light of what we have already observed of the way
in which relationships are acknowledged, has a fair degree of
probability about it. The Jechonias of Matthew 1:12 was, as we
have seen, the king who terminated the Judean royal line when
these unfortunate people went into captivity. Although he is
stated to have been still a child, he survived long enough in
captivity to reach a marriageable age; he evidently was later
accorded kingly status -- a not unusual circumstance in those
days -- for the girl he married is called (in Jeremiah 29:2)
"his queen". Scripture has taken care to provide us
with very concrete information to this

pg.14
of 18

effect (2 Kings 25:27-30)
as though God foresaw that one day this information would be
important.
Now, to bring the two genealogies
at this point into harmony, it is only necessary to assume that
Neri of Luke 3:27 also went into captivity and there raised both
sons and daughters, and that one of these daughters became the
wife and queen of Jechonias. This is a most reasonable assumption
really, because, if Neri was known to be of the royal line through
Nathan (and Nehemiah 7:5 shows that at least some genealogies
had been saved in spite of the conquest of Judah), then who would
be more proper as the wife of the still-acknowledged king than
a daughter of the royal line? Of this marriage, Jechonias had
a son (among others) whose name was Salathiel (I Chronicles 3:17)
and besides Salathiel he had also a second son named Pedaiah.
In I Chronicles 3:19 Pedaiah had a son named Zerubbabel (the
"Zorobabel" of the New Testament). Thus Salathiel was,
in fact, properly called the son of Jechonias but also the son
of Neri through the latter's daughter. The two lines from David
through Solomon and through Nathan meet in Salathiel by this
device. Salathiel's brother, Pedaiah, though not mentioned in
either of the New Testament genealogies, appears to have exercised
the right of the Levirate upon the early death of his brother
Salathiel, and to have taken his wife, by whom he raised up to
Salathiel's line a son named Zorobabel.
In Zorobabel we again meet with
an example of a man's children being traced through their mother's
father. Zorobabel had both sons and daughters, but the male seed
for some unknown reason came to an end, thus fulfilling the prophecy
made in Jeremiah 22:30 that no man of Jechonias' seed "should
sit on the throne of David". We are, however, given his
daughter's name in I Chronicles 3:19 as "Shelomith".
We have only to make one further assumption, namely, that this
girl married the Rhesa of Luke 3:17 and had of this union two
sons -- Abiud of Matthew 1:13 and Joanna of Luke 3:17 -- and
the rest makes perfectly good sense and the two genealogies are
reconciled, the one with the other.
By this means -- always bearing
in mind the manner of stating relationships which was allowable
-- we can see how, according to Matthew, Jechonias had a son
Salathiel and Salathiel had a son (via his brother Pedaiah) Zorobabel,
and Zorobabel a son (actually a grandchild through his daughter
Shelomith) named Abiud, and thence down to Joseph: and at the
same time, according to Luke, how Neri could have a son Salathiel
(actually his grandson), who had a son Zorobabel (again, in fact
a grandson), who had a son Rhesa (actually his

pg.15
of 18

son-in-law, as Joseph was Heli's son-in-law),
and Rhesa a son, Joanna by his wife Shelomith who was a daughter
of Zorobabel, and thence down to Heli.
This sounds terribly complicated,
but the full genealogical table (see file Adam.html) which gives
both lines, will show that all the requirements of all that we
know, both from the Old and the New Testament, seem to be satisfied.
There are no conflicts either between
the Old and the New Testament records or between Matthew and

pg.16
of 18

Luke. The validity of
the claim that Jesus was the promised Messiah as the Son of David,
the Seed of the Woman as virgin-born through Mary, the Saviour
of mankind as the Son of Man (from Adam) and the Son of God (as
conceived supernaturally by the Holy Spirit) is assured on every
ground.
Undoubtedly a study of the genealogies
requires considerable effort, perhaps more effort (or at least
a different kind of effort) from that which normally proves most
fruitful when expended elsewhere in Bible study. But it is well
worth it and brings with it a peculiar intellectual satisfaction.

Section
4: Departures From the Usual Way of Setting Forth a Genealogy

The fundamental departure found
in Luke's Gospel, is that in this genealogy we are not presented
at the top of the page with the oldest antecedent followed by
father, sons, grandsons, and so on, but rather with the latest
in the line, who is then by a simple device traced backwards
-- whereas all other genealogies trace forward. Why was this
order adopted?
There is a second departure, namely,
that whereas Matthew and John both commence their history
by establishing the pedigree, Luke covers briefly but effectively
a period of some thirty years in the life of the Lord before
saying who He is in terms of his antecedents.
It is not until this time -- when
Jesus, being now about thirty years of age, has been identified
by John as the "Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of
the world" and singularly considered by God in heaven as
His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased -- that Luke sets
forth his lineage, showing in effect that though the circumstances
of Jesus' birth were such as to set Him apart from all other
men, yet He was nevertheless truly representative of man in Adam.
The genealogy of Matthew reads
forward from Abraham to Jesus, identifying Him as the Child of
Promise. Promises are always of the future, and Matthew wished
above all to establish from the very first that Jesus was the
Christ, the fulfillment of this promise. He wanted to show the
grounds upon which Jesus established his title as the Messiah,
and his Gospel thereafter presents His credentials as the Son
of David.
Luke, on the other hand, wished
to show the potential of man, the model which God had in mind
from which all other men derive whatever of manhood they happen
to have. Hence he begins with Jesus and

pg.17
of 18

appropriately gives
Him alone, above all others, the title "Son of Man",
and then he traces Him back to Adam, in whose place He stood.
Thus Matthew begins with Abraham and
leads us forward to the Lord, whom he identifies by his title,
"the Christ" (Matthew 1:17); whereas Luke begins with
the Lord, whom he identifies by his name, "Jesus"
(Luke 3:23), and leads us back to Adam and so to God.

Viewed as vehicles for conveying
information, the genealogies of the Bible are supportive of one
another. Were it not for the genealogical material in the Old
Testament, the genealogies in the New Testament would be without
historical foundation; and were it not for the genealogies in
the New Testament, the genealogical material of the Old, preserved
with such precision, would be without point. One set of data
looks forward, and one looks backward. Each is required to complete
the other. Just as we are learning, contrary to earlier expectations,
that there are no useless or vestigial organs in the body, so
we shall learn, perhaps contrary to present expectation, that
there are no useless entries in the Word of God. All Scripture
is given by inspiration and is profitable. . . .
(2 Tim. 3:16). The brief treatment of the genealogies in this
Paper barely scratches the surface of only a few of them. There
is yet much to be discovered, enough undoubtedly to keep a man
occupied for a lifetime.